A Honduras-based resort proprietor says he’s reviving the Fyre Competition model alongside Billy McFarland as a pop-up expertise at his island resort, marking the illegal act twist in a weird saga.
Heath Miller, a former New York live performance promoter and one-time supervisor of Webster Corridor in Manhattan, says he reached an settlement with McFarland to stage a 300-to-400-person Fyre Resort Pop-Up at his resort, Coral Villa Utila, positioned on the island of Utila, one among Honduras’ famed Bay Islands within the Caribbean. The occasion will run from Sept. 3-10.
Tickets are low-cost: Simply e book a room at Miller’s 25-room resort, and a move for Fyre is included. Rooms begin at $198 per evening for singles, $329 for {couples}, $399 for triples and $449 for the resort’s four-bed room.
Miller is fast to level out that the September occasion isn’t being billed as Fyre Competition II, including that tickets from that occasion received’t get you entry to the Fyre Resort Pop-Up, which he says shall be extra low key than what had been deliberate for Fyre’s comeback competition in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. There shall be reside leisure, though Miller notes that he hasn’t secured any expertise but and says the competition received’t have a big funds or a splashy lineup.
“This occasion isn’t for an artist in search of a $100,000 price,” he says. “Truthfully, for me, it is a promotional car for my resort and it performs into my grand plan — I’m engaged on writing a e book on my music profession, and the e book was supposed to finish final June [with a story about] Jack Antonoff in Asbury Park. However as a substitute, I assume Fyre goes to be the ultimate chapter of the e book.”
In Miller’s estimation, the controversy across the disastrous 2018 competition — which garnered worldwide headlines when ticketholders arrived on a Bahamian island to search out that the promised luxurious occasion had not been realized — might finally be the largest draw.
“Fyre Competition is a tainted model that clearly has a horrible popularity, however on the finish of the day, this model can create press and consciousness higher than Coachella can,” he says.
Miller has been managing the resort since 2019 for his late father, who purchased the island resort within the Nineties. He says his thought for the Fyre pop-up is partially impressed by Sixthman, the live performance and cruise ships firm owned by Norwegian Cruise Traces that stages music-themed cruises for artists like Lindsay Stirling, Joe Bonamassa and comic Nate Bargatze.
“Initially, I wished to do fan membership and occasions right here,” on Utila, says Miller, who hoped to match music with scuba diving and water excursions. He provides, “Followers wish to interact with the artist in distinctive and alternative ways and see them play in distinctive settings,” noting that the Fyre pop-up offered a uncommon alternative to construct proof of idea.
Beneath the phrases of their settlement, McFarland maintains full possession of Fyre, and Miller will function venue supervisor and website host.
Miller says he’s already secured permits and native approval for the Fyre Resort Pop-Up and stated he hopes the famed competition model creates some constructive buzz for Utila. The island is in style year-round with scuba divers and snorkelers who go to the island to swim with sharks and discover the 600-mile-long Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, but it surely isn’t as well-known as different Caribbean locations like Barbados, St. Lucia, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Miller provides he’s properly conscious of McFarland’s previous failures with Fyre Competition, most famously with the disastrous first version in 2018, which left a whole bunch of followers quickly trapped on Grand Exuma island. McFarland masterminded the occasion, in response to the FBI, convincing followers to shell out 1000’s for luxurious lodging that turned out to be emergency tents and connoisseur meals that have been little greater than cheese sandwiches.
McFarland went to jail after admitting to stealing $26 million from buyers for the occasion and has been working to repay them since being launched from jail in 2022 after serving 4 years of his six-year sentence. Whereas serving in solitary confinement, McFarland got here up with the thought for a sequel to Fyre, which he had hoped would restore his picture, and bounced round completely different websites within the Bahamas and Mexico earlier than touchdown on Playa del Carmen close to Cancun. McFarland finally employed Mexican agency Misplaced Nights to supply the occasion and staged a press convention on March 27 with native officers to spotlight it.
Nevertheless, issues went south in April when metropolis leaders from Playa del Carmen introduced that no permits for Fyre Competition had been issued within the seaside city. McFarland responded by releasing photographs of permits that he stated proved Fyre was taking place, however he later pulled the plug on the occasion and refunded ticket holders. On April 24, McFarland introduced he was selling Fyre’s assets and mental property and had reached an settlement with a streaming service to license the identify.
Miller says McFarland retains the identify for Fyre and has a core workforce of a half-dozen people working with him, together with his long-time associate, Michael Falb.
“I’m properly conscious of Billy’s previous and I believe it’s necessary that we’re clear about what occurred. I personally met with the mayor of Utila when securing the permits for this occasion and even confirmed him the documentaries about Fyre Competition,” Miller stated of the movies FYRE: The Biggest Celebration That By no means Occurred and Fyre Fraud, each of which have been launched in 2019 and chronicled the competition’s rise and fall.
“Billy has points and one among his largest flaws is that he tends to belief folks greater than he ought to,” Miller says, noting that McFarland reminds him of himself when he was a younger promoter working New York’s nightlife circuit as an unbiased live performance promoter, each for himself and for John Scher’s Metropolitan Concert events and later Webster Corridor. Miller notes he labored with McFarland previous to Fyre Competition, when McFarland was working millennial VIP firm Magnises.
“He by no means stiffed me on a invoice — we at all times acquired paid what we have been owed,” Miller says. “I take a look at Billy’s errors and I ask myself what I’d have finished if I used to be controlling tens of millions of {dollars} for an enormous occasion. I don’t know. What I can inform you about Billy is that he a giant child at coronary heart that actually simply desires to throw the world’s biggest occasion.”
To purchase tickets and study extra go to fyrehotels.com.